I am trying to finish my student reel, which is due soon... However I have just the damnest problem. After pulling yet another routine all nighter, AE will not let me render due to its MISSING OF FILES...

However there are no files missing. The video plays within AE just fine, however AE will not allow me to render que it due to these "phantom" missing files.. As it will render up to 6 seconds and status bar comes to a dead stop. The computer acts as if it is still rendering but I know it is not because it has been 20 minutes and they status bar has not moved not one increment.

Is there any way to fix this problem?

My composition so far is only 18 seconds long and uses no Hi-res videos of any kind.

My first thought would be faulty RAM or a codec error, probably the last.

If you check the frames where it usually hangs and delete one layer at a time to see if it will render then - you might find the problem layer. You might be able to convert that layer into an uncompressed QuickTime to see if I helps.

Alternatively, render to image sequence with 'skip existing frames' enabled. After the render hangs, you can fire off the same render and it will continue where it stoppe last time. Sometimes this will do the trick. Before re-starting the render I usually manually delete the last rendered frame because it may be corrupted.